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Deep tech founder and CTO with 12+ years of experience leading AI product strategy and…
Articles by Ankit Narayan
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisWhat does “98% accuracy” really mean when your image recognition solution hits the real world? Most vendors showcase impressive demos, benchmark scores, and headline accuracy numbers. But procurement teams and decision-makers know that the real challenge begins after deployment. In retail execution, image recognition performance is influenced by factors that rarely appear in sales presentations: • Quality and diversity of training data • Lighting variations across stores • Shelf occlusions and cluttered environments • Long-tail SKUs with limited examples • Deployment and maintenance challenges • Real-world edge cases that emerge over time The difference between a successful rollout and an expensive pilot often comes down to what lies beneath the surface. We've compiled a practical whitepaper for procurement leaders, category teams, and retail technology decision-makers to help evaluate image recognition vendors beyond the marketing claims. Key Things Procurement and Decision Makers Should Keep in Mind Before Selecting an Image Recognition Vendor The paper covers: ✅ What accuracy metrics actually matter ✅ Questions every vendor should be able to answer ✅ Hidden operational costs and dependencies ✅ How to assess scalability across markets and categories ✅ Common pitfalls that lead to disappointing deployments Choosing the right partner isn't about finding the highest claimed accuracy. It's about finding a solution that consistently delivers value in real-world conditions. Download the whitepaper and let us know which evaluation criteria you consider most important when selecting AI vendors - https://lnkd.in/gCw-Xgs6 #RetailExecution #ImageRecognition #ComputerVision #RetailTech #CPG #AI #MachineLearning #RetailAnalytics
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisExcited to be featured again in Forbes Technology Council expert panel discussion on how teams can strengthen SRE without overwhelming engineers. My take: cap toil, automate aggressively with AI, and keep engineers focused on engineering. https://lnkd.in/g-EP5DgYHow To Strengthen SRE Without Overwhelming Tech TeamsHow To Strengthen SRE Without Overwhelming Tech Teams
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Ankit Narayan Singh reposted thisAnkit Narayan Singh reposted thisPerfect Store execution isn't a one-time achievement. It's a discipline maintained across thousands of stores, hundreds of SKUs, and every off-trade channel. ShelfWatch gives field teams the visibility to make that happen, consistently and at scale. Proud to be powering that for Hieneken
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared this🚀 🚀Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisParallelDots has been featured in Hindustan Times "Brands to Watch in 2026: Redefining the Future of Business." ShelfWatch is redefining retail execution for the world's leading CPG brands giving field teams real-time shelf intelligence directly at the point of sale, across 50+ countries. In 2026, we're doubling down on what matters most: making retail audits faster, smarter, and more accurate than ever! https://lnkd.in/gJVGDv2TBrands to watch in 2026: Redefining the future of businessBrands to watch in 2026: Redefining the future of business
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisShared my take in a Forbes Tech Council expert panel on fighting feature creep. My point: adoption numbers alone should not determine whether a feature lives or dies. Microsoft's Clippy, the butt of all jokes and memes, had high engagement but it also created significant confusion and they killed it eventually. If a feature generates more friction than value, sunset it. Customer pain is harder to argue with than a usage chart.Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisThe smartest strategies look beyond raw adoption and consider the fuller picture of customer value, business impact, strategic fit and the ongoing cost of complexity. Read more at https://hubs.li/Q04cB4m_0 from Lori Schafer of Digital Wave Technology, Ankit Agrawal of Equifax, Kevin Dominik Korte, Ankit Narayan Singh of ParallelDots., Sandeep Shivam of Tavant, Michael Flickinger of Bizowie Cloud ERP, Aruna Veerappan of Fortune 500 companies, Abhinav Sinha of ZentrumHub, Rajiv Gupta of Amazon Web Services, Boyan (Bo) Ivanov of StorPool Storage, Uttam Kumar of American Eagle Outfitters Inc., Rishi Gupta (Ex-Walmart, Nike) of Infosys DX Consulting, Salim Gheewalla of utilITise, Vishwanadham Mandala of Cummins Inc, Ajit Sahu of Data SafeGuard INC, Margarita Simonova of ILoveMyQA, Michael Tyrimos of Capacitor Partners, Divye Khilnani of Intuit Inc., Sarvesh Desai of KPMG LLP, and Vanessa Chambers of Martus SolutionsHow To Stop Feature Creep And Prioritize Product ValueHow To Stop Feature Creep And Prioritize Product Value
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Ankit Narayan Singh reposted thisAnkit Narayan Singh reposted thisEngineers who understand how to impose structure around model behavior play a critical role in turning experimental workflows into reliable systems. https://hubs.li/Q046DQD10 Written by Ankit Narayan Singh of ParallelDotsFive Valuable Engineering Skills For The AI-First WorldFive Valuable Engineering Skills For The AI-First World
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisIf you are a software engineer anxious about AI taking your job, I wrote about why you shouldn't be in my latest Forbes Technology Council article. The gap between what models can do in a demo and what it takes to make them work in production is massive. And that gap is your opportunity. Wrote about five areas where software engineers have a clear and lasting advantage. 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞. 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥. 𝐇𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐎𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲. These are not drastically new skills to learn from scratch. They are extensions of what strong engineers already do. The AI era does not make engineering less important. It makes good engineering even more important. https://lnkd.in/gmv9KbA4Five Valuable Engineering Skills For The AI-First WorldFive Valuable Engineering Skills For The AI-First World
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisLooking forward to speaking at the Google Cloud panel in Bengaluru on The Agentic Pivot: Engineering the $1B Lean Startup. As AI moves from being an assistant to becoming an agent, accuracy and reliability start to matter much more. These systems will be expected to take actions and operate inside real business workflows. That shift opens up many billion-dollar opportunities across the agentic stack. Most of these will not be solved by wrapper startups or commodity LLMs alone. They require deep engineering around reliability, domain adaptation and integration with real-world systems. Having spent more than a decade building applied AI systems that run in production, I’m looking forward to sharing a practical perspective on where the real opportunities lie and how lean teams can realistically be while building them. See you there! 👋
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Ankit Narayan Singh shared thisExcited to be speaking at Digital Native Connect on March 18th! 🙌 Looking forward to sharing my experience on building AI-first products that actually scale and deliver business outcomes beyond demos! Hope to see you there! 🚀Ankit Narayan Singh shared this#SpeakerAnnouncement 𝐌𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫: 𝐌𝐫. Ankit Narayan Singh, 𝐂𝐨-𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 & 𝐂𝐓𝐎, ParallelDots AI is no longer an add-on; it’s the core. Join Mr. Ankit Narayan at 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 | 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐮 | 𝟏𝟖𝐭𝐡 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 as he shares insights on building AI-first, cloud-enabled digital services that scale with intelligence and impact. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭: 👉 Embedding AI at the heart of digital strategy 👉 Enhancing cloud capabilities with intelligence 👉 Delivering smarter, faster digital experiences 👉 Scaling innovation with real business outcomes Be part of the conversation shaping the AI-driven future, hosted by IndiaIT360. 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐨𝐰: https://lnkd.in/gjX838GR IndiaIT360 | Alok Gupta | Nishtha Gupta | Sarita Verma | Veena Rathi | Bhavna Agrahari | Nishant Chaudhary | Sadique Mohammad | Yogesh Singh #IndiaIT360 #DigitalNativeConnect #MultiCloud #EdgeComputing #CloudStrategy #EnterpriseAI #DigitalTransformation #CIOConnect #CXOConnect #ITLeadership #FutureOfTech #DigitalTrust #SmartEnterprise #TechEcosystem #InnovateToLead #SpeakerAnnouncement
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Hi Mike - I feel that unlike SFA or CRM tools that can scale globally quickly, IR is fundamentally harder to scale — what works in one market doesn’t translate to another due to differences in retail environments, merchandising standards and user behaviour. No single vendor has built the versatile, market-agnostic capabilities needed to serve CPGs globally, which is exactly what we’re trying to solve at ShelfWatch.
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisElastic has agreed to acquire Deductive AI for up to $85M, bringing AI-powered software reliability engineering into its observability platform just months after Deductive emerged from stealth with a $7.5M seed round led by CRV, with Databricks Ventures, Thomvest, and PrimeSet participating. Co-founded by Rakesh Kothari (ex-ThoughtSpot) and Sameer Agarwal (founding engineer at Databricks), the deal comes as sector leader Resolve AI — co-founded by ex-Splunk executive Spiros Xanthos — is valued at $1.5B following a $40M Series A extension. https://lnkd.in/gEj_rfgP #AI #SRE #AIAgents #Acquisition #EnterpriseAI #SoftwareReliability #Observability #GenerativeAI #AIInvesting #Elastic
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisI've been asked a lot how I negotiated my ElevenLabs compensation as the 4th employee and the person to build GTM from the ground-up. It was simple: ▪️I established my priority: a specific equity % above anything else ▪️Told Mati what my target ownership was. I felt it was fair and the founders felt it was too high (the standard response) ▪️I then proposed a milestone-driven approach to unlock my target ownership, with a twist of creativity ▪️A portion of the equity would start from joining with the standard equity plan (4y plan, 1y cliff, monthly vesting). A second tranche would only be released if we hit a specific ARR threshold within 24 months. As soon as reached, it would be released with a backdate to my original start date (again, 4y plan, 1y cliff, monthly vesting) ▪️The second tranche threshold was very ambitious. Only a handful of companies had done it but we all felt it was fair. It aligned everyone's incentives for company revenue & valuation growth ▪️No $ commission on sales. I never got a single $ for deals I've sold in 3.5 years. Not even the multi-$m deals I brought. This is & was fair ▪️For the first 9 months, it was mostly me selling. 60-80 meetings per week. Insane. But I was motivated to hit the tranche 2 milestone ▪️We hit the revenue milestone within 12 months of launching our first ever product The reason I tell this story now is because there is no higher motivation than equity. Outside the US, we don't give enough equity to employees and employees haven't understood & cared enough about equity. This has a direct impact in success. I invest through my fund, Baobab Ventures, and I always recommend founders a milestones-driven compensation plan in GTM. It is the perfect way to align incentives.
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisOne month down at Yeo Valley! 🌿🐄 Time flies when you're having fun! I've just completed my first month at Yeo Valley Organic and I'm really enjoying getting to know this fantastic business. So far, I've met some amazing people, sampled some delicious food (a tasty perk of the job!), and even spent time down on the farm. On the IT side, there's no shortage of exciting opportunities to help transform the way we do business and support the future of Yeo. I'm looking forward to playing my part in helping to nurture and nourish people and planet, and to seeing what the next chapter brings. Here's to the journey ahead! 🚜💻🥛🌍 #YeoValley #NewBeginnings #IT #PeopleAndPlanet #LifeAtYeoValley
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisSome dreams are seen with open eyes. Today, our family witnessed a moment that will stay with us forever as we watched Aman K. walk across the stage at his convocation from the Smith School of Business at Queen's University, one of the world's most respected institutions for commerce and business. There are achievements that seem inevitable in hindsight, but those who know the journey understand what it truly took: the quiet mornings of preparation, the moments of doubt silenced by determination, and the kind of grit that doesn't announce itself but simply shows up every single day. Aman, you dared to dream at a scale that many would hesitate to imagine. And then, you did the harder thing: you worked for it. As you step forward into a world that will present both challenges and opportunities, carry with you the lessons from this journey: Excellence is not a destination, it is a Discipline; Passion without Perseverance is incomplete; and every door you open from here on, you open not just for yourself, but for everyone who believed in you. The best chapters are still unwritten. Go write them with the same courage that brought you here. Congratulations, Aman, we are proud of you!
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisWe are hosting a webinar to show you how to win the shelf. 🎙️ Shelf to Strategy: Winning the Last Three Feet of Retail ⏰ 3:30 PM IST | 6:00 PM SGT | 11:30 AM CEST | ⏱️ 30 mins In 30 minutes, Madhu Kris and Rishabh Agarwal break down the four metrics that measure shelf execution, including the one nobody tracks, and the two gaps quietly draining revenue you already earned. You will walk away with three things your team can do Monday morning. 🚀 👉 Save your seat (link in comments). #CPG #retailexecution #shelfwatch #perfectstore #trademarketing #retailtech
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisEvery firm in executive search is asking the 𝙬𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙜 question. It's not "should we 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘰𝘳 𝗯𝘂𝘆?" It's: "What can we now do that we simply couldn't before?" A few days ago, I was at the Harvard Club of New York City representing Recruiterflow at the Hunt Scanlon Media conference. Six panels. That reframe came up in the very first session - and it set the tone for everything that followed. AI isn't just doing old things faster. It's unlocking entirely new capabilities. Conversational querying of your own data, Surfacing institutional knowledge buried in old notes, Interview scheduling that drops from 3 days → to 3 minutes. But every panel came back to the same caveat. None of it compounds without 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢. None of it scales without 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘱. None of it sticks if your team doesn't 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 in it first. The firms 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨? They bought licenses and assumed adoption would follow. The firms 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦-𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨? They built champions, ran pilots, and made AI part of how work actually gets done - not a tool sitting on top of it. 𝗔𝗜 𝙖𝙙𝙤𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 and 𝗔𝗜 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 are not the same thing. Not even close. Manan Shah Amritanshu Anand Nisha Singh #HuntScanlon #ExecutiveSearch #AIinExecSearch #AIAdoption #AIStrategy #Recruiterflow #AInative #Futureproof #Enterprise
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisIn 2019, four engineers �� Tuhin Srivastava, Amir Haghighat, Phil Howes, and Pankaj Gupta — founded Baseten on a quiet but powerful bet: Training AI models would get all the headlines. Running them at scale would get all the money. They were right. Baseten builds the infrastructure that sits between an AI model and the company using it — handling inference, optimizing costs, routing requests to the most efficient model for each task. Their pitch: open-source models are getting very good. Companies shouldn't have to pay frontier model prices for every use case. Customers like Cursor, Notion, and Mercor have reported up to 30% cost reduction compared to proprietary alternatives. Revenue grew from $200M to $600M annualized in a single quarter. This week they closed a $1.5B round at up to $13B valuation — 160% higher than just five months ago. CEO Srivastava said it best: "If cloud was the foundation that enabled the last generation of great technology companies, inference is the foundation for the next." The race to own the inference layer is now officially the biggest fight in AI. #AIInfrastructure #Baseten #StartupFunding #MachineLearning #TheFoundory
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisLooking to hire experienced Analytics/Machine Learning professionals as AI architects in my team at ParallelDots. Would be looking at people with 5+ years [or even more, the more, the better] of experience. At ParallelDots, we train and deploy models at scale, 100s of new models process millions of images every month. There is substantial decision making involved on our proprietary computer vision platform ensuring new models being deployed are robust to real world distortions in images, store layouts and power law distribution in data. AI Architects will help me with these decisions on day-to-day basis. Not open to hiring freshers, people from unrelated work profiles. This is a cross functional role that mixes sharp analytics skills with attention to detail. An ideal person for the job is someone who has taken decisions about Machine Learning model/analytics report being shared/deployed [whatever be the technology platform, its the last mile decisions that are important]. Remote role, can work from anywhere, expect lot of calls, involvement and ownership. Preferred timezone : IST. To apply, please share CV on leadershiphiring@paralleldots.com and we will get back if we see a fit. Alternatively, apply on this link : https://lnkd.in/gADNAqEh
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Ankit Narayan Singh liked thisAnkit Narayan Singh liked thisThe most impactful health habit I've built in the last few years takes less than 10 minutes. And it's not a workout. It's a walk after meals. For a long time, I focused on the big things: 1. Strength training 2. Nutrition 3. Protein intake But one habit that quietly moved the needle was a simple 10-minute walk after lunch or dinner. Benefits I noticed: * Better digestion * More stable energy levels * Reduced post-meal sluggishness * Easier fat loss The lesson wasn't about walking. It was about finding habits that are so simple that they don't depend on motivation. As professionals, we often look for complex solutions. But many health outcomes are driven by small actions repeated hundreds of times. If you could add just one health habit this week, make it a short walk after your largest meal. Simple. Free. Effective. What's the simplest health habit that has given you outsized results?
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